No question about it, the bitter pill of failure, any kind of failure, can be hard to stomach. I’ve always hated failing at something and haven’t ever really thought much about any potential positives from it until more recently when I played my first fantasy adventure role play game.
You see, in the game, as with all role-play dice games, you can roll what’s called a failure roll and it basically means what it sounds like. You fail and don’t achieve what you set out to do. There is a silver lining to this though in that every time you roll a failure dice, you also gain what are called experience points. In the game, this means your character, while they fail in the short term and may get sent back, in the long run they gain more skills and abilities.
Aha! Perhaps this could apply to my own life…. Looking through this lens, with every setback, every failure big or small, I haven’t been only failing, I’ve been gaining experience. Over time, I’ve gained perspective and resiliency, I’ve grown, even when I didn’t always realize it. And yes, I’ve revisited the same lessons over and over and have gained lots of experience from them, going into deeper layers each time!
Now if only I could remember this the next time I’m in the depths of despair of failure’s chokehold, listening to its insipid lies that I’m not good enough.
Well maybe not, maybe not today, maybe not ever, at least according to the critical judge inside my head whispering insipid lies about my worth. Maybe, just maybe, next time, I’ll be able to whisper back, “Thank you, you’re right this was a big failure. Just think how many experience points we’ll get!”